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Sociology 498: Homelessness
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Sociology 498: Homelessness
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Liebow: Tell Them Who I Am
Reading Questions |
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We want to compare the strengths and weaknesses of qualitative studies like Liebow's ethnography. There are some things that ethnographies can do better than surveys and some things they cannot do as well. Among the strengths we want to pay special attention to are:
The preface is an account of how Liebow became interested in homelessness and how his relationships with the women at the shelter were negotiated. Implicitly, the preface is full of advice about how to interact with homeless people.
What is the importance of:
Why does Liebow avoid analyzing mental illness?
What are the disadvantages of not addressing mental illness more directly?
How does Liebow handle:
When you finish this chapter think about
how this chapter shows some of the strengths of ethnographies
as a way of doing social research.
How are the issues here different from what might be addressed in a survey?
This chapter is designed to help answer those questions.
Liebow marshals several arguments here; your job is to
identify as many as possible.
In the end, Liebow argues that jobs are important to
these women, but not for the reasons "Uncle Harry" thinks.
The reason Liebow cites is characteristic of his whole argument.
Once you understand Liebow's answers to these criticisms,
see if you can think of a rebuttal to any of his arguments.
I used to think Liebow's argument about the non-economic
importance of work was a nice reversal on the usual emphasis on work as
money.
But I have become more skeptical the more I have thought about it.
Perhaps Liebow is imposing his middle-class and professional perspective
about work on these poor women who have, for good reason, a very
different orientation to work.
It seems convincing to us because we, too, are middle class, and
so [most of us] share Liebow's perspective.
But this may be a failure of not realizing how
important class differences are in thinking about work.
What do you think?
Beneath all the many different examples, however, Liebow does want us to
understand some general patterns. As is typical in an ethnography,
these conclusions tend to be made at the end of each chapter.
(Compare Rossi who is more apt to state his conclusions at the beginning
before he has described any specific data.)
Probably the most central theme in this chapter is that families are
sources of both
comfort and pain
Liebow is also perceptive in noting how homelessness
changes
these women's family relationships.
What are his examples of how family relationships are affected by
homelessness?
Although Liebow is more concerned with how
family relationships help or hinder these women's struggles
to maintain their dignity in the face of homelessness,
he also provides some insights into how family relationships
are sometimes a cause of homelessness.
Underlying these issues is the implicit question of whether
families of the homeless shouldn't be responsible for solving their
homelessness.
This chapter describes the places the homeless can look to for
help in trying to survive homelessness.
This is, as Liebow stated in the introduction,
an important part of understanding how the homeless remain human
in a dehumanizing situation -- one of Liebow's primary
purposes in researching homelessness.
Liebow gives both examples and counter-examples in describing
these sources of support.
Chapter 2: Work and Jobs
The women themselves, and many other people,
believe that getting a job is the way out of homelessness.
"Uncle Harry" will often argue that the homeless are just lazy:
if they wanted to work, they could find a job and work their way
out of homelessness.
Why should we help people who are too lazy to work?
Chapter 3: Families
This chapter can be somewhat frustrating because, like his chapter
on jobs, Liebow emphasizes the
diversity of family relationships.
Moreover, in this chapter Liebow has an annoying (to me at least) tendency
to state a general pattern and then the first concrete example he describes
is a counter-example to his stated pattern.
But the basic point about diversity is one of Liebow's important lessons for
us.
Does this vary by family type?
Chapter 5: My Friends, My God, Myself
Chapter 6: Making It Together
Chapter 4: Servers and served
Chapter 7: Some Thoughts on Homelessness
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| Last updated March 6, 2007 |
comments to: Reeve Vanneman.
reeve@umd.edu
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